Riley McCallister
|died=November 2010. |status=Deceased- died after being stabbed in the chest by Leon Vance. |gender=Male |portrayed=Michael O'Neil |first-ncis=Enemies Foreign (episode) |la=show |last-ncis=Life Before His Eyes (episode) }}Riley McCallister was a retired NCIS Special Agent and, secretly, head of a conspiracy against Director Leon Vance. Biography Pre-Series A Russian expert, McAllister was a senior agent in the Washington, D.C. area at the time the Cold War ended in 1991. Realizing that his expertise, and thus his career, were in danger of being undervalued, he masterminded a plot to recruit Leon Vance from the Naval War College as a probationary agent and send him on a covert mission to Amsterdam. The true purpose of the mission was for Vance (who McAllister believed was expendable) to be killed by "The Russian", a former Soviet assassin named Anatoly Zhukov who had been tipped to Vance's presence. McAllister calculated that to have an American agent killed by a Russian wet-work team would prompt NCIS to conclude that the Russians were still a very real threat, and McAllister believed he could eventually ascend to the Directorship. Unfortunately for McAllister, Vance was intercepted and aided by Mossad agent Eli David, who had been sent to Amsterdam to eliminate Zhukov and his team, and quickly deduced that Vance was intended to be bait. Not only did McAllister's plot fail, but Vance's narrow escape made him a rising star in the agency. McAllister took out his bitterness by assigning Vance to menial assignments for which he was unqualified, doing his best to sabotage the latter's career, but McAllister was helpless to prevent younger agents like Vance and Jenny Shepard rising steadily through the ranks and eventually achieve the post of Director that McAllister believed should have been his. McAllister himself was transferred to head NCIS's field office in San Diego, before being compelled to retire (to his increased bitterness, Vance himself headed the San Diego office after McAllister, a step on his way to succeeding Shepard as Director). NCIS Season 8 A review conference, held by NCIS Director Leon Vance, involved going over important cases from the agency's history. In part, this was meant to keep various agents afield 'in the loop,' but Vance also maintained the tradition of these conferences in order to foster trust and shared information. One of the most senior and important agents at this conference was McCallister, by then retired. During the conference, McCallister quietly bemoaned that he had brought the wrong cane; his other one supposedly contained a flask of alcohol. Gibbs, who was at the conference to provide security, grinned at McCallister's whispered words and asked where the agency had 'dug Riley up.' The two old friends briefly discussed McCallister's attempted isolation from the rest of the world after his retirement at an archipelago in the Atlantic, Tristan de Cunha, and the mission that he had supposedly been building there. At that moment, Vance handed off leading the conference to McCallister while he took a short break; the retired agent quipped morosely that he was 'to play schoolteacher again.' At the same time as the conference, three bodies were shipped from the Gulf of Mexico, one of them a naval officer (Captain Caleb Burnett); they were posthumously accused of running a smuggling operation on their boat, which sank in the Gulf of Mexico during a supposed firefight with the U.S. Coast Guard. Through medical examiner Mallard's thorough examination and the efforts of forensic scientist Scuito, as well as the confessions of a team of Mossad agents originally flagged as terrorists by NCIS, it was found that these three men had smuggled a trio of Palestinian terrorists into the country, and that their target was Mossad Director David. The Mossad agents, Malachi Ben-Gidon and Liat Tuvia, admit that they do not know how the Palestinians are aware of David's travels to the United States, as express and explicit measures were taken by every level of their agency to prevent the knowledge of his trip from extending beyond the attendees of the conference. The conspiracy involving the Palestinians continued to unravel in the background of the conference, until the arrival of Directors David and Vance, along with their respective bodyguards, Amit Hadar and Ziva David, came under fire from a stolen motion-sensor turret placed by the terrorists. Ziva remained at the hotel where the conference was taking place, while Hadar drove the directors to an NCIS safehouse nearby, a fallback point established for just such an occasion. However, this in itself was the final, fatal move in an elaborate trap, as an explosion at the door of the safehouse killed Hadar and wounded Vance, while David was apparently abducted from the scene. The method by which the bomb was triggered led back to Director Vance's very first mission with what was then NIS-- a covert operation in Amsterdam, where Vance was meant to intercept and eliminate a dangerous Russian operative in the final days of the Cold War. McCallister was a participant in this operation, meeting Vance in the field to provide him with intel and warn him against making mistakes that could expose his true identity to the Russian. Vance later went on to meet then-agent David for the first time during this operation, with the two of them chatting at a cafe and later cooperating to help take down the Russian and his people using a booby-trapped door. McCallister was secretly disappointed by the successful outcome of the operation, as he had not expected Vance to succeed, and was in fact hoping that he would fail. The elder agent attempted to put Vance on another difficult assignment, and during Vance's public objection in the NIS breakroom, he ended up meeting Gibbs for the first time. McCallister witnessed this and dismissively sent Vance on his way, hoping that the next mission would break him. However, Vance ended up surpassing expectations yet again, and rose through the ranks of the agency to the rank of Director, taking the position after the death of Director Jenny Shepard in a shootout in 2008. Angered by the success of who he had hoped would be a pawn in his own rise to power, McCallister orchestrated a conspiracy involving the Palestinians, letting it slip to them that their mortal enemy, Director David, would be present at Vance's conference. With this, McCallister hoped to invalidate the successes achieved by Vance while he was head of the agency, and to humiliate Vance in retribution for his own embarrassment as a result of Amsterdam. After the ambush outside the conference, during which a terrorist fired an RPG and blew up an unoccupied taxi, the conference went into lockdown. McCallister, supposedly concerned by the gunfire and the blast, was in the process of walking to the entrance and drawing his weapon from a secret holster when DiNozzo showed up and awkwardly assured those present that the threat had been handled. Nonetheless, the conference was evacuated, with all attendees moved to NCIS headquarters in the Navy Yard, including McCallister. As the investigation into the kidnapping of Director David continued, McCallister spoke with Gibbs in the squad room. Picking out a file from a box of relevant information on Gibbs' desk, McCallister handed his friend the folder on Operation Trident-- the official name for the Amsterdam operation. This folder enabled Gibbs and his team to find the Russian operative who Vance and David had been targeting all those years ago, and to confront him about what relevance he may have had to ongoing events. The Russian, whose true name was Anatoly Zhukov, provided the final clues that allowed Gibbs to link the Palestinians to his friend Riley. Ironically, it was McCallister's attempts to maintain his cover that ultimately led to Gibbs piecing together his duplicitous behavior. With his proxy operatives either dead or in custody, McCallister chose to confront Director Vance in his hospital room. Although Vance had been told the details by Gibbs, his injuries after the safehouse explosion meant that McCallister had the upper hand at first; the older man pinned down the director with his cane and spoke at length about how he felt maligned by Vance's ascent to the upper annals of the agency, and how he deserved the authority and praise that Vance had received. Believing that the director was completely defenseless, McCallister leaned over him as he spoke, reaching over to the morphine drip and forcing it to inject Vance with an overdose of the drug, while also silencing the alarm on his heartbeat minotr. Vance, however, had an ace up his sleeve: a knife, provided by Gibbs. The director stabbed his former mentor in the chest, directly through his heart. McCallister, shocked, fell backward and collapsed to the floor. Vance waited a few seconds before pressing his hospital bed's call button, making sure McAllister was beyond saving before help arrived. NCIS Season 9 McCallister appeared in the episode Life Before His Eyes, speaking with Gibbs about the decisions he'd made and his work with NCIS. He also explained an alternate timeline regarding Gibbs' choice to go after Pedro Hernandez, the man who had killed Shannon and Kelly Gibbs, and what would have become of him had he not made the choice to shoot Hernandez. After borrowing a quarter for the jukebox from Gibbs, McCallister explained that, had Gibbs not chosen the course of revenge, he would have become a recluse, hiding away in his basement even as those who he loved and worked with went forward in their lives. Gibbs would have pushed them away, isolating himself in his guilt. Although Gibbs was skeptical of McCallister, considering his duplicity in life, the information that his old friend passed along to him helped him accept one of his most contentious and life-altering choices. Personality McCallister outwardly appeared to be a stern professional, but within, he was consumed by envy. That one of his proxies, Leon Vance, had advanced above him in the chain of command and succeeded where McCallister expected he would not shook him, and the veteran agent chose to go rogue. This course of revenge, similar in some ways to the one that Gibbs chose and that McCallister 'consulted' him on in Gibbs' imagination, ultimately led to his death at Vance's hands. Abilities McCallister was supremely talented at the art of manipulation. He was also intelligent, capable of orchestrating an elaborate conspiracy and seeing it through to completion, even at the expense of the lives of his allies. Much like Gibbs and Mike Franks, McCallister was firm in doing what he believed needed to be done, no matter what rules it went against. Known Victims *2010: The following were involved in the hotel bombing: **Amit Hadar- (Killed in the explosion at the safehouse). **Eli David- (Survived the bombing and left a trail for his agents to follow). **Leon Vance- (Survived the bombing, and a second attempt consisting of a morphine overdose in order to get Vance's job as N.C.I.S. Director). Proxy Victims *1991: Leon Vance- (Hired Anatoly Zukov to kill him, but failed). *1999: The following were targets of the second assassination operation: **Anatoly Zhukov- (Shot at point blank range by Leroy Jethro Gibbs who didn't know that he was covering McCallister's attempt to kill Vance). **Svetlana Chernitskaya- (Was targeted to die but Jenny could not kill her. Later shot at point blank range by Mike Franks to avenge Jenny's death). **2008: William Decker - (Having been involved in the 1999 operation alongside Gibbs and Jenny Shepard, Decker was hunted down by McCallister's thugs and tortured for information. When he failed to provide, he was murdered; his cause of death was registered as a heart attack, but Jenny, Gibbs and Mike Franks knew the truth). **2008: Jennifer Shepard - (Killed in a gunfire fight in a Diner; McCallister wanted Jenny's job as N.C.I.S. Director, but in order to hide his involvement in her death, he used Svetlana Chernitskaya's past association with Jenny as a cover; her and Viggo were both hired by McCallister to take Jenny out. Category:Americans Category:Murderers Category:Criminals Category:Recurring Characters Category:Former NCIS Members Category:Killed by Leon Vance